This disclosure relates to data processing, and more particularly, to data management systems and techniques.
Information technology (“IT”) environments can include different systems performing processes, such as business processes, on common master data. The different systems can belong to a single entity or to several different entities (such as vendors and contractors for a single, large company). The master data in the IT environment can be stored in a number of different locations, systems, and/or formats. For example, branch offices of a company can work with largely independent systems, adopted companies can introduce new software solutions to a group of affiliated companies, and systems from different vendors can be linked. Disparate master data models can make it difficult to integrate business processes across such diverse IT environments.
Disparate master data can be stored in different systems in an IT environment. Such disparate master data can lead to data redundancies and the storage of irrelevant or incorrect information. For example, if two branches of a single company each collaborate with the same entity, a separate master data object for the entity may be maintained by each of the two branches. This redundancy can result in high content maintenance costs. Further, business analyses performed using redundant or disparate information can lead to poor business decisions. For example, a company-wide analysis of collaborators can fail to identify the correspondence between the two redundant master data objects and business value can be lost.